art attacks

I've been trying to write a blogpost since Saturday, but my weekend and early week just keep going and going faster and faster until here I am, and it's lunchtime on Wednesday. My art attacks, let me share you them.

Contents
Friday: Robert Guth at CCAS
Saturday: Material World at ANCA, plus some jazz
Sunday: Guerrilla printing day with Angela
Monday: Edible Books & farewell Lynda
Tuesday: Running away with ourselves
Wednesday: Remember to breathe

Friday
I'm actually not much of a one to go out on a friday night except to the movies but my ukulele group was invited to play towards the end of an end of a PhD event at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space. Plus it was a chance to catch up with lots of friends from art skool. So we went and won some odd things at the auction (and lost some wanted things that were outbid) and ate the yummy kangaroo doner kebabs and the endless hot fresh sugary donuts that kept pumping out of the donut machine and eventually the uke group found each other, dragged some chairs into a circle and had a play. We're not a very forward group, we fly under the radar a bit. No leaders, lots of attitude, unable to finish a song at the same time, but happy and jolly and with good taste in music. Well, we think we have. We played some Billy Bragg, Lou Reed, the Breeders, the Cure, Johnny Cash... you get the idea. Fairly Gen X, us. Most of the crowd had gone home by the time we started, but we played for the cleaner-uppers.

Saturday
A lovely visit to the Farmers Markets to buy yummies, into the studio for some Making time, and then my friend Angela Gardner arrived from Brisbane to spend a night and a day with me. Angela is a printmaker and poet, and byrd and I used one of her poems for our Demolition piece at Print Big a few years ago. We nattered for a while, and then it was time to go to ANCA for the opening of Material World, the show I'm in where we all had to make site-specific works with found objects. It as a wonderful opening, one of the best I've been to, mainly because it was low-key, friendly, there was heaps of food & wine and a band, and at 7.30 the lights were turned out for Earth Hour and we sat around the fires and looked at the candle-lit art and talked to each other happily. Narelle Phillips, one of the curators, writes up her experience here. She's an ace chick, and working with her is always a pleasure.

I enjoyed people's reaction to my work, once they found it. All you could see on the way in was the dangling bookmark ribbons, but if you went outside for a glass of wine and a bit of cheese and then walked back in, there it was, obvious as hell. Many people just assumed I'd filled the girder with intact books, because it looked very natural and un-artlike. Another friend came up to me and said that it frustrated him because there seemed to be no logic to the shelf arrangement. When I told him that it wasn't mean to be logical, and that the books were often in conversation with each other, he went back and spent TWENTY minutes looking at it. When he'd finished I asked if he was happier and he just shrugged, which I guess means NO, but... win for me, it engaged him for TWENTY MINUTES. How many other works of art can do that? Bless.

Afterwards we dragged ourselves away and over to a fabulous party close to our place, where some friends were farewelling their son as he flies to Berlin soon to complete a Masters in jazz. So there was more food and more wine and a stage where he and his mates got up and played a storm for us. We left at about 10.30, but apparently it all didn't finish until 3am. Who says Canberra is boring?

Sunday
Angela and I had a hope that we could have a play in the studio together before she left. She had a 5:15 flight, and in our favour was the change back from daylight saving, which gave us the feeling that we had an extra hour. We left the party at a decent time, despite the good jazz, to give ourselves a fighting chance of a solid day's play. So we awoke, and talked about texts for a while as BB made us a big cooked breakfast. We sat out the back and ate the big cooked breakfast and talked ideas and then hit the studio.

We worked with a new poem that had been brewing for a few weeks. I didn't grasp the meaning at first (sometimes takes a while with poems, don't you think?) which dismayed her, but once we discussed it and I talked about finding and creating a graphic starting point for the meaning, we were off. We set and printed an editioned letterpress broadside in one day! Mind you, the type is still sitting on my press today (I'll dismantle it once I finish typing); it was crazy fun. We're a good team: she arranged the wood type into cloud shapes while I tore up the paper (working out the dimensions as I tore, changing our minds once or twice) then I locked the wood type on the pressbed while she started setting the poem's text. She printed the embossed woodtype while I was her clean-hands assistant, then I set up the metal type while she put away the wood type and mixed the ink. We printed the last layer and finished with time to spare to look at a few other printed things and get to her plane. Phew! Here are a few photos:


Upside-down clouds!


Embossed clouds.


If we'd had more time I would have got this curve much smoother, but I did the best I could in a hurry.


The final work, drying on the rack.


Angela, working the press.


Happy, tired ladeez.

Over at Angela's blog you'll see the same photos and similar words from a different angle. I'm glad she liked listening to Dig Music with me. I've become quite addicted to it, and yesterday came home to discover that I've won a double CD of blues & roots music in a small competition they were running. Yay!

Monday
As well as teaching my normal class, I'd wrangled the students into making some edible books as part of the annual International Edible Books Festival and bringing them in for a 'lunch'. It was pretty rough and ready, since neither Ingeborg (the other teacher) and I had time to organise plates or tablecloths or such things, but the works themselves were delightful, and the ones that could be eaten (some were hypotheticals) were delicious.


I was very fond of these bananas. Have a look at my flickr site for the full range, many put a lot of effort into it. I loved being able to eat a miniature 'Animal Farm'!

Monday evening was spent, as usual, at my ukulele group, but this time we were farewelling a steadfast member who is moving to Melbourne. She is a beautiful singer, and there was much discussion about who could be 'the voice' now. We made her sing all 'her' songs in the songbook the group has compiled; she does a rendition of Joni Mitchell's 'A Case of You' that is almost better than the original and definitely better than any other cover I've heard. We also played 'Under the Milky Way Tonight' by the Church in honour of Jimmy Little, who'd died that day (or the day before?).

Tuesday
Tuesday I spent some time with a cousin of BB's, down for the Renaissance exhibition and when I dropped her at the bus back to Sydney, I kept going in to the uni and caught up with a dear friend to talk about life, the universe, and doing some work together. We had lunch and started talking about things that got very intense, and I finished by suggesting that we just drop everything for a few hours and go to the uni bar and play some pool. We giggled like schoolchildren as we played, completely invisible to the 20-somethings playing around us, except for the moment when T, a pool shark in her youth, got up on the table to do a particularly impressive backwards shot. That got their attention. It was tremendous fun and I went home afterwards feeling quite revived.

Wednesday


BB's lovely cousin took this photo of Padge.

So here I am, sitting in a quiet moment, ready to get back into the action again. More printing, some Folk Festivalling on Friday and then I'm going to the Blue Mountains for two days to celebrate a 50th birthday and to meet Dr Sister Outlaw's new kitten. I'm looking forward to Monday, pure sleep-in time, and maybe a movie date with my nice cooking man. Did I tell you that while Angela and I were printing, he was in the kitchen making cake, fig & pear paste, something else that I forget and spaghetti for dinner? My, this house buzzed last weekend.

Living in a Material World

Today is installation day for Material World, the show for which I've been preparing work. The exhibition is by a group of artists making site-specific installation works that explore environmentalism through the use of recycled and found materials. My work is using a mass of books donated to me by the Lifeline Book Fair, the books that they just can't sell to anyone despite their best efforts. As you would imagine, a lot of these are Readers Digests (many have never been opened and read) but many are by very famous and popular authors.



Here's a shot of the process of putting the books up into the central girder of the gallery. I was worried that the various things I've been playing with would get a bit lost so high up, but now that the work exists in entirety, I'm very happy. It has a few layers: there's the instant 'oh, books in a girder, that's cool' effect, and then there are lots of little things happening to amuse and interest people stopping to have a harder look.

The title of the work is 'Shelf Life'. The premise is a work about books that are unloved and left unnoticed and untouched for long periods of time. It's very whimsical and at one point a little bit creepy, which is something I love in other people's art, so I'm glad when I can make it happen too.

It's also such a rich idea that I've decided to use the books afterwards for a series of photos. I've taken some practice versions with my dodgy digicam, but I'll do them properly later.


Shelf Life (Practice)


Shelf Life (Crisis)

O wot fun.

The exhibition opens tomorrow (Wednesday 28 March) at 12pm, but the formal opening event is on Saturday at 6pm, in conjunction with Earth Hour. There will be artist's talks, food, music, fun. At 7.30pm they will switch off all the lights, and there will be candles and fires and more music and food. It should be wonderful, and you're ALL welcome.

Time and concentration in Melbourne

Phew, it took me three full days to start feeling 'normal' again after my Melbourne trip. So tired! And a weird fuzziness like I'd had a migraine, without the migraine. Maybe I do have something lurking in my system, or maybe I'm getting old and just pushed myself too hard after the gastro. Either way, ageing sucks, doesn't it?

Anyway, I spent those three days submerged in Lev Grossman's The Magicians and The Magician King (not finished that one yet). AWESOME! Hipsters with magic using heavy and playful references to Narnia, Potter, Earthsea, LOTR, and other fantasy novels. Fabulous way to flop around.

So: Melbourne. I'm off the tram (obviously), had a lovely time. I always wish I could split myself into parts when I'm travelling on public transport in Melbourne, so that I could jump off at different spots and do all the things I see, and then meet up that evening and compare notes. It didn't help that it was Moomba weekend, lots going on between Carlton and St Kilda on that particular trip.

Adventure and Art was a fantastic afternoon, organised by the Baillieu Library's Susan Millard and her team. The exhibition lingers until May, so do go and have a look if you're hanging around the Uni of Melbourne. You won't see any of my work in the exhibition; in fact the only woman in the show is (rightfully, if there had to only be one) Carolyn Fraser of Idlewild Press. A shame, but there you go. As compensation, I suspect, I was given a whole half an hour to talk about myself, how I got into printing, and how the fine press book fits into all of my other activities, such as teaching book arts, etc.

I managed to fill the time easily, talking about my Summer School class and the various reasons why people, in my experience, want to play with letterpress these days. I also talked about my journey into printing, which gave me the chance to sing the praises of Alec Bolton (Brindabella Press) and Petr Herel (Graphic Investigations Workshop, Canberra School of Art) and talk about the way one was a fine printer who focused on Australian art & writing and the other was an artist who taught fine printing in his curriculum. Alec, unfortunately, is dead, but Petr is very much alive and was in the audience and was very happy to be remembered.

As far as the last bit goes, I unpacked the 'etc' a bit and bluntly stated that for most people (including me for the last few years) the fine press book doesn't fit into their activities, because fine printing in book form takes time and concentration, which is a luxury in a working life, and this is why I've been printing broadsides and making less intense books. While I was saying these things, though, I walked them through the pages of the one fine press book I've made that I really, really love (because it was totally mine to design and produce, without outside pressures): Transmigration.

It seemed to go down well. Peter Vangioni from the Kowhai Press in Christchurch was the only other speaker with 30 minutes up his sleeve, and he said wonderful things and tragic things about being a printer, and being a printer and gallery curator in an earthquake zone.

There was also a panel made up of Carolyn Fraser, Andrew Schuller and Alan Loney. I'd been to visit Carolyn and her studio that morning, and we'd had a fantastic catch-up, talking about life, the universe and letterpress. When she stood up and gave her ten minute's worth of opinion, it was sharp and pointy and dense with things that I hope the audience took away to mull over and digest, including the notion that Melbourne needs a public access printing space, based on the model of the NY Centre for the book. Not like the Melbourne Museum of Printing, where the facilities are barely held together with string and chewing gum, but a solid, well-organised, supported space where people can do courses to gain competency and then can use the space on a time-share basis to produce their own work. Come to think of it, we have a role model in Australia already : Megalo, here in Canberra. So let's get that thought in action: Melbourne Centre for Printing & the Book (or something like). Pity the Wheeler Centre missed the ball in that respect.

Andrew, an ex-Oxford University Press man, discussed the blurred margins of fine press printing: that it's hard to distinguish is something is finely printed as a fine press book or as an artist's book, but it's easy to tell when something isn't. And perhaps that's the only distinction that should be made? Why do we need lines drawn in sand? The artists in the room nodded.

Alan is the curator of the show, a master printer in his own right, and one who is unashamed of drawing those lines, even though many of his own poems have been finely printed as artists' books by other people. He spoke eloquently about his passion for the craft and his hopes for its future.




Afterwards there was time to look at the books, complete with nibbles and drinks before the next batch of words, speeches by Andrew and Alan again (but not repetitive, which was lovely). I got the chance to talk to many, many people about many, many things, and I'm sure a lot of it will return to me in time.

After that those who spoke or organised had dinner together at University House in an amazing room:



Surrounded by faces like these in the wall panels:



Aren't they beautiful? Apparently some man skinned his room in Paris & brought it all over to Australia, where it now resides in this room. Amazing. I should be able give you more details, we were all talking about it, but by that part of the day I wasn't really able to hold any more information. I do know that Peter V and I were sitting with our backs to a Breughel painting, which blew him away. He kept turning around and exclaiming. I was watching the faces, there were a lot of them.

Other things I did during my stay: I spent just under 3 hours with the work of William Kentridge, which was stupendous. I was there on the first morning of the exhibition, so I was maybe the 50th person in? I know that I was never in any room with more than 4 people, and most-times I was by myself in a space, and I know that will never happen again in the run of the exhibition.

I also, on the way to the airport on Saturday, spent time in the State Library's new show, Love & Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, an exhibition of Persian illuminated books and Persian-influenced books sourced from the Bodleian Library and the SLV. It is stunning, absolutely sumptuous.

So now it's (slowly) back to the grind, getting Material World together and making some books. Time and concentration, that's what it's all about.

altering attitudes about (e)books

I am participating in a group exhibition of site-specific work at the end of this month. It's called Material World, and we've all chosen a part of the ANCA gallery to play with.

I chose one of the girders in the ceiling, partly because I like the thought of making people look up away from the 'normal' eyeline of hung art and partly because they've always made me think of bookshelves. You can never have enough bookshelves in a space.

So I'm making an installation of altered books, literally altered to fit the space. I haven't planned all the details of the installation yet, because it's evolving as the date gets closer and I collect the materials.

This is the exciting thing about site-specific work for me. It's made, as the genre suggests, to fit that space only, and that space has very specific needs. For example, there are three girders in the main space, and they are all different lengths thanks to the shape of the gallery. They all have a lighting rack intersecting them about one metre in from each side. So what I put in one girder wouldn't fit in either of the other girders unless I change the work.

Today I drove (through the rain) to the Lifeline Book Fair Depot to meet up with Cedric Bear (best name ever!!!), a very nice man who is also a member of the Canberra Bookbinders. I had previously flagged with him the possibility of my needing over five metres of hardbacks that I could cut up, and he was happy to donate them, especially if they were books that they just can't shift at the twice-yearly fairs.

This is what I ended up with:



Boxes and boxes of hardback books by writers like Bryce Courtenay, Wilbur Smith, John Grisham, Stephen King, and myriad Reader's Digest volumes, both old and new.

Cedric didn't have to rummage around to find these particular boxes, and the volunteers packing my car offered me more, and said that I could go back & get more if I find I need them. What I took didn't make a dent in the depot's store of these books, and I've seen their shrink-wrapped pallets of the same hardbacks, in multiples of multiples.

THESE ARE THE BEST ADVERTISEMENT FOR E-BOOKS I HAVE EVER SEEN.


It's not that the writers are {ahem} bad, it's that people will buy themselves these huge, badly-produced, cheap-papered volumes, read them once, maybe lend them to a friend, and then throw them away. Or in this case, donate them to Lifeline. Who have gazillions of them. Go into any secondhand bookshop, they have shelves of the buggers. Who wants them? No-one, they've already read them. And these kinds of readers want them to be new/fresh/free of germs/whatever.

If this is a description of your nana/pop/dad/aunt/uncle/friend, BUY THEM A KINDLE. All these books are available as e-texts, and e-readers can be made into large print books. Think of the number of trees we will save!

I've always thought that e-books will not kill books in general, they will just winnow through the chaff and allow good books to be produced well and collected by those who love the form. These crappy books are not loveable, they are the equivalent of Happy Meals with Toys. Don't buy them.

I'm going to have fun with these books. I won't know what I'll do until I go through them and talk to them and think about what they want to, and how they will interact with each other.

So thank you, Lifeline peoples. You rock. I'll make sure you get an invitation to the opening and an acknowledgement for your donation to my work. I'm looking forward to everything about the exhibition except the bit where I have to climb a ladder to install my work. I hate climbing ladders!

Reading

Since giving up Facebook games, I've been reading again. It's so old-fashioned, it's such fun. I mean, I always read, but lately it's been just at bedtime, to make my brain stop whizzing and sleep. Now I'm reading in the morning, reading in the afternoon, reading in cafes. Outrageous!


Last Thursday and Friday I inhaled The Hare with Amber Eyes, which was gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. I wish I could see ALL the netsuke, but by the look of teh interwebs, so does everyone.

On Sunday I pretty much inhaled the whole of Wendy James' new novel The Mistake. It's a corker, a wonderful piece of suspense suspended in a very contemporary setting. It's a moral conundrum, and just as you think you've worked out what you think, it takes you right to the end and completely upends you. Highly recommended.


I also read Jane Austen's unpublished novel Lady Susan, which was completely not what I expected it to be.

In Melbourne I only had the braincells to read 3 books by Donna Leon, of whom I went through a phase many years ago, but it is either testament to my awful memory or the same-iness of her writing that I had already read two of the three and didn't realise it. I don't read or watch crime fiction by choice, but I can handle DL because her books are more about food, politics and Venice more than the actual crime, which often gets solved almost as an afterthought.

I read Alan Loney's short book, Anne of the Iron Door, which is about Gutenberg, and is very sad. His life was very sad generally, but Alan has made the story more about Anne, and her (imagined) life is awful. Beautifully written, though.

I'm now reading Autumn Laing, lent to me by my mother-in-law, and apparently based on Sunday Reed.

When I only have a moment, I dip into Hark! A Vagrant! the book, which just gets better and better with rereading. I think I've linked to these before, but I can't find where so I'm going to link again.

Dudewatching with the Brontes.
Young Ada Lovelace
Peasant comics
Wonder Woman

OMG, I have to stop, but I can't stop, Kate Beaton's comics are SO GOOD, and all about literature and history, so they are good for you.

Time to go to bed and read. My fingertips are aching from ukulele group tonight, and the keyboard is just making it worse. Good night!

Rare Book Summer School: 2

Yesterday was just the practice day. Today was the Fun Day before the Real Deal.

We met up as a class at the State Library and had a chance to introduce ourselves and look at a mouth-watering collection of printed matter pulled out of the collection by the afore-mentioned Des.





I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts participants; I have a local book designer, a letterpress printer from NZ, another one from far north Qld, a library professional from SA and an artist/studio tech from WA. Also Trent, who is a book arts teacher and the letterpress tech here at Monash.

We came out to the Monash Caulfield campus in a clump on the train after lunch, and spent the afternoon looking at my examples, fondling the equipment, comparing stories and resource contacts and making plans for the week's work.







The idea is to print a folio of letterpress poetry broadsides. We're going to keep the paper size small to accommodate a few of the press platen sizes, and we're working with a choice of poems by three poets from the John Leonard Press stable.

So tomorrow we start, bright and early and earnest, and the dirty work begins!

Reading list

Turns out I *have* read The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, but it was so long ago that I've forgotten the details. Doesn't matter, she's such a pleasure to read every time.

Just finished The Children's Bach by Helen Garner, after everyone telling me for years to read it. I found it at the Federation Square book stalls, started it at Melbourne Airport and read most of it waiting for my delayed plane and during the flight, then lost it unpacking and only finished it yesterday morning. It is wonderful, you were all right. The sheet-folding scene on pp. 56-7 of my 1985 McPhee Gribble Penguin edition is so close to Rosemary Dobson's poem 'Folding the Sheets' that I am at a loss to know which came first, the dates of origin being very close. (They are good friends: I have often read postcards from HG to RD and helped RD to write letters to HG. I've never met HG.) I was quite startled when I found it.

I also finished Sophie Cunningham's Melbourne. I borrowed it from a friend, but I'm going to need my own copy. My copy of Kerryn Goldsworthy's Adelaide should be arriving any day now, requested from my mother-in-law as a birthday gift (she doesn't accept 'don't buy me anything, oh maybe just a voucher' as a response, I have to name a title). I can't wait to read it.

Is that the time? I meant to get out of bed at 9, it's now 11.20. Better do something useful with the day; I printed last night until midnight in my uggboots -- such a luxury to have the house to myself! And the cats, of course. They're all over the bed right now. I slept in my big King-size bed last night squished up between two big furry animals... might as well have had the whole family in there, the amount of room I got.

*happy*

{ahem... I do miss the boys, of course.}

Transition

I finished my residency on Friday; it hasn't hit home yet, but I guess it will when Tuesday comes and I'm in Melbourne rather than at the school. I've written two more progress posts on my work blog: one on printing and one on posting. I had such a good time. What you see above is three-quarters of the school, gathered in front of the 'bounceback wall' in the playground after we'd posted our cards. It's a small, close and warm community of children, teachers and parents, and I'll miss them, although I will be returning in October for a visit to deliver their single-coptic-bound book of postcards and I'll also visit regularly, since it's on my flight path to uni.

Next stop is Melbourne, for the Impact7 conference that seems to be competing with the AFL Grand Final for space and attention when you look at the list of associated exhibitions. I've written my paper and sent down my portfolio for presentation; the biggest stress is how to see and do everything in the short time we have, including catching up with people. There's a blogmeet planned for Saturday late arvo/evening but we haven't settled upon a meeting place yet. I will tweet it when I know, so if you're interested, watch my tweet listings in the ride sidebar there --->

I'll also be tweeting during the conference and liveblogging with the Book Art Object group, as part of our project.

In other news, every year before my birthday my mother-in-law rings me to ask what book I'd like for my birthday. This year I asked for Kerryn Goldworthy's Adelaide book, knowing that it's being released soon... and discovered that it's being released on my actual birthday, 1 October! Yay, onya Kerryn. I'm over halfway through Sophie Cunningham's Melbourne right now, which is a great lead up to my trip.

Dammit, I've been thinking of things I want to blog, but now that I'm sitting here (having just polished off a wonderful breakfast made by Best Beloved: Eggs Benedict on a poppyseed bagel) my mind is blank.

It's the Lifeline Bookfair this weekend, but I'm not getting too excited, having only just resolved all our bookshelves and also having rediscovered the local library. I popped in yesterday and got all cranky about their demarcations. There's a General Fiction section, which I think should be EVERYTHING that's not 'genre' fiction like thrillers, horror, sci fi and fantasy. But no, any book written by someone with a funny name, or written by a woman or written by an Australian is shunted onto a different table (in order: World Literature; Romance/Chicklit; OR Gender Fiction; Australian Fiction). I inwardly cheer when I see an Australian in the General Fiction, or laugh when I see Bury's 'History of the Later Roman Empire' (both volumes) in the Historical Fiction section.

I'm going back today because they're having a 'Bookbinder's' table, with what they call 'treasures' with broken bindings, all under $10. I'll be interested to see what is a treasure.

The wind is horrendous today, it's the worst thing about Spring. It makes being in the studio very unpleasant, because there's a gap at the top of each rollerdoor, and the wind slips over and brings dust. I've just found 2 sets of secondhand glass sliding doors, complete with screen security doors, at the local builder's trading post and a building friend (the same one who built the kitchen in our last house) is going to install them over the next couple of weeks in front of the roller doors so that I can open them and get light without wind... huzzar! That will foil you, cursed wind.

My other great find is also a pair. There's a little auction house near the farmers markets at EPIC and I wandered in the other day and asked if they ever get mapping cabinets (no artist ever has enough). He had two coming in that week -- timber ones! I gave him an absentee bidding form (I had a guest at the auction time) and I won them! They are being delivered when I get back. Out with the sticky-drawered crappy metal cabinet that I have now and in with the timber stack! Happy, happy happy.

So much to look forward to when I return from conference hobnobbing... time to get up and pack!

snakes and ladders

Gosh, it's been a whirlwind of a fortnight. Sorry, I just looked up and realised that I hadn't even checked my email since Friday night. And working full-time just sucks your life away, doesn't it? Lots of time to do inane Facebook things in the background, no time to do anything meaningful. It just sucks. I remember now why I gave up my full-time office job, there's really no time to be fully-functioning in the world. Mind you, Best Beloved thrives in his job. He loves Serving the Public. Go figure.

Emotionally we've all been thrashing one way and another, with one niece on the brink of death last weekend (conveniently while we were in Sydney so that I could teach a (lovely, if I may say so myself) weekend workshop at Warringah Printmakers, hence we could go and sit by her Intensive Care bedside) and another niece giving birth yesterday to an enormously gorgeous baby, making us all Very Young Great Aunts and Uncles. The Very Young Grandparents are being extremely wise in seeing this as the opportunity to have a Very Long and Happy Relationship with their grandchild. Congratulations to them, and a big sigh of relief that the other niece (from a separate branch of the same family) is recovering. Apologies for all the parentheses, it's all pretty complicated.

This weekend was the big Books-on-Bookshelves moving. Lots of boxes to heave and empty. I worked out a system based on my experience with letterpress. Letterpress takes a long time to set up, with very quick printing. It's always an exercise in patience. So. I emptied all of my boxes (left BB to do his own, always safest) and sorted all the books into A to Z on the floor, and then once that was done, put them on the shelves, sorting further into A-Z within each letter as I shelved, and dissing the ones I just didn't connect with (or had multiples of, having bought them again unwittingly) as I went.



Here's a view of stage 1. This is all the novels, with the bookcase up the back filled with poetry. I had grand plans to enter all the books into LibraryThing as I went (those that aren't on already), having bought a lovely little cat-shaped scanner that works with it, but the scanner is in a box somewhere and I couldn't be bothered working manually and slowly to enter them. Sigh.

Of course, the cats helped.



So at the time of writing MOST of the books are on shelves. There are still lots of boxes of various stuffs that need to be sorted, and a garage sale to be had, and then I can do serious studio prep, like painting and floor coverings. The press move is booked for 22 July, and I'm just about to steel myself to write my official email to ANCA to let them know when I'll be out. Exciting but scary.

Hopefully now I'm going to have more time to write and read blogs. I also want to get some printing done and share it with you, as it's not been a terribly big making year so far. I'll leave you with the brooches that I made for ANCA's PIN WONDERWALL show. it finished today, and was a huge sell-out, red dots everywhere like the plague. There were fabulous pieces, by 70-odd artists.

This lot are called 'Phat Groovers', and they're made from vinyl record shards and rhinestones:



They're an edition of ten, and I think about six are sold. Don't try smashing records at home, kids! Vinyl doesn't smash, it has to be bent & it shatters. I'm still finding little unusable shards around my studio...

And this is a one-off, made from a vintage belt buckle and a piece of video tape (with a single rhinestone around the back). It's called 'Pretty Woman', because that's the movie I used. It sold too! Yay.

Books.

I've been thinking a lot about books lately. I know you all think that I think about books all the time, and maybe I do, but as I keep telling anyone who will listen, the world of books is a very large one, with a lot of various crinkly little islands to explore.

I realise at this point that I've been WELL this week, which is why I'm thinking about something besides feeling unwell. You only feel well in hindsight, don't you? Takes something like a beach or a sunset or a smile to make you realise, but there you are, caught out, feeling well.

Anyhoo, books. I've been thinking about artist's books, but that's another post in draft form because I've been looking at the Megalo BOOK members' show.

I've also been thinking about 'real' books, the books people have in their houses, only 'real' in the disrespectful sense that 'normal' works in most circumstances. What the hell does 'real' mean? What the hell is 'normal'? Why do people always want simple answers from me about books? What the hell is 'simple'?

Rick Gekoski (I keep spelling his name wrong, but that's ok because today he spelled mine wrong) is one of those people who can seemingly pull out simple statements about books and book-buying and reading and his distaste for the internet, but often simple (or trite) statements come from unshared deeper thinking. I saw him this afternoon at the National Library, in 'conversation' with Colin Steele, and the most lasting impression I got is that he entertains the masses with the tritely amusing, and saves all the best bits for over a glass of something in front of a fire, maybe with a cat on his lap. He'd be a much more entertaining person one-on-one, unlike myself, as I'm vastly entertaining en masse and quite dull in person.

I love the National Library as an institution, and am a Friend of it, but when I go to events there I get quite smothered by the thick fug of Smug in the air. You know the stuff: an entire theatre of people who Know They Read The Right Stuff. It's probably gathering about Sydney Harbour as I type, as the various venues prepare for the writers festival. I'm not complaining about ALL readers, or even people at festivals, but of people who don't like Genre Writers (although a thriller/murder mystery every now and again is perfectly fine, darling).

There were two moments of audible crowd reaction this afternoon. The first was when RG -- no, three! three moments of audible crowd reaction. Nobody expects the Spanish -- was giving us the red hot dirt on the International Booker Prize judging: "Carmen said she would ferret out some Chinese writers, came back with twenty novels. A ferret on speed, more like it." {{Titter}} went the happily scandalised audience. ("Bet someone's going to tweet that, damn them." No, just blog it, Rick.)

The second moment was when he said that reading good books didn't make you a better person, it just made you a better reader. That got a shockwave of disapproval; he obviously says that at every gig to get a reaction. He rationalised it beautifully, spoke of Leavis and the canon, but for me it was a DUH moment. I always mix my oats with some fruit. Last week I was reading Jackie Collins, this week Ruth Park, next week, who knows?

The third was when he stated that the internet had killed the antiquarian book industry, and got a sympathetic tutting and nodding of heads. Well, yes, because it meant a sharing of information that killed the inflated prices that suppressed information allows. But, as I pointed out in question time and afterwards in private, you won't totally lose secondhand booksellers and dealers because people need to see and feel what they're buying, and while people are buying more new books online, or secondhand books for basic reading, the need to inspect and feel will always be there for collectors.

Now that you can easily buy e-books for reading, publishers are falling over themselves to make collectable editions of both new and reprint books. They are setting up the future book collecting industry, where you will be able to collect all the various chicklit editions of Jane Austen, or only books with 'American' bindings (the ones that keep or manufacture a deckled edge on the pages). Books are shifting in the same way that all obsolete technologies go: to the scrapheap, or to the collections. Some survive, many don't. If they all survived, how boring! The hunt, the thrill of the chase, continues, and will continue on into the so-called paperless society everyone keeps banging on about. When/if there is no more paper, paper products will be fetishized, even more than they are now.

So there. That's another two cents from me.

Later I also asked RG, as he signed my sketchbook (my copy of his book is in the garage waiting for the bookshelves. He signed it 'For Karen, and Karen's book in the garage. Liberate the Books!') about the difference between the Fine Press book trade and the Rare Book trade, and we nattered on happily while the person in line behind me scowled and sent hate waves into the back of my neck. RG said, 'I always know when I meet someone who prints fine press books that I'm going to dislike them; they're always softly spoken with weird little beards, sandals, and fishy handshakes.' I laughed and shook his hand firmly and said goodbye, resolving to make fewer absolute statements in the future.

I've failed already, haven't I? Oh well.

One thing I do know -- I'm painting our bookshelves this weekend, and by the end of it, I'll be wishing I could never see a bloody book again.

Newsflash

While we were in NZ, Bumblebee fell in love with L&P, a lemony mineral-waterish softdrink. It's hard to find in Australia, we've tried all sorts of places, within the ACT and without.

Yesterday, BB sent him off to our new local supermarket to get some (badly-needed) tonic water, and he came back crowing. It stocks L&P. What are the odds?

Now he's really, really glad we moved. He's still bouncing around the house. All I can think is that at least now he's distracted from buying Coke.


Oh, and RIP Diana Wynne Jones. I hadn't realised she was dying. She really was a very good writer. I've said before here that I think she's better than JK Rowling, if only for the depth of her imagination. She didn't borrow and adapt, she MADE IT UP. JKR is better at making you bond with characters, but DWJ let her freak flag fly in sooo many different ways. She leaves an awesome body of books that are sometimes quite hard to find, but do persist.

Procrastrination city

I've just wasted a couple of hours (how fast does the clock go when you're having fun??!!) building a quiz that you'll all probably hate.

I've been having an ongoing discussion about Bernice's Oztralyan Bounty of Books, and what I'd like to know is, of all these books that we get on reading lists and study lists etc, which ones do we actually like by these authors?

So I've made a very uncomprehensive list which will probably make people sigh, but maybe I'll make a better one when I'm not meant to be sanding and painting and dusting.

Here it is, in friendly quiz parameters, with their stoopid advertising and stuff, but I hope to get something interesting out of it, for no reason at all really. Feel free to share the link, the more the merrier.

terribubbly sad but happy too

To be honest, I didn't know that Ruth Park was still alive until yesterday when she died. She's three years older than the Aged Poet (who is 90), so she had a lovely long life (although I hope she enjoyed her Extreme Old Age more than the AP is).

We are huge fans of The Muddle-headed Wombat. I packed the books away yesterday so I can't give you an example of the wonderful writing. Best Beloved was reading them aloud to me when I was sick recently and he does all the voices so well. In our minds Padge is Wombat and Puss is Pooter. Secretly in my mind, I am Mouse, Bumblebee is Wombat and BB is Puss.

Her novels and autobiographical work are wonderful as well, of course, but if she'd only ever written TMHW, it would have been legacy enough. Thank you, RP, and RIP.





The most excellent news is that after some high-tension negotiation argy bargy, we got to a price we could pay on the house we like. We haven't exchanged contracts yet, so cross fingers for me that all goes well until then. The best bit of the agreement is that we will get access to the new house's garage between Exchange and Settlement to store all our boxes etc so that the old house can be clear and uncluttered for the Open House time! *big sigh of relief*

I was out last night, and I'd left a tense and gloomy household, because of the argy-bargy. They were supposed to be cooking dinner, but nothing much had happened by the time I left. Then I got a text saying BRING PIZZA AND CHAMPAGNE. Shazam! I happily did so, knowing that the world had just turned on its axis.


So I'm suspending my studio activities for a month (unless something really urgent comes up) and devoting my energy to packing, painting, patching, and what ever else comes up. Apart from Christmas, of course. It's going to be extra relaxing, because we know how much work is ahead of us. W00T!

Oztralyan Bounty of Books

The marvellous Bernice Balconey has rightly pointed out that while the last list was Very Worthy, it's also Very British (well, it was a BBC list). My objection to it, upon contemplation, was the weirdness of it -- I mean, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, with Hamlet singled out? The Chronicles of Narnia and then The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe singled out? Bizarre.

Anyhoo, Bernice has gone to the trouble of making another list for a meme. It's called

Bernice's Bounty of Books: The Ozstralyan Way



Same rules: bold for read, italic for started/not finished/bits read. I won't do so well this time, but I'm still going to try...

1. Fortunes of Richard Mahony - Henry Handel Richardson
2. The Reading Group - Amanda Lohrey
3. Coonardoo - Katherine Susannah Pritchard
4. Dog Rock - David Foster
5. The Transit of Venus - Shirley Hazard
6. Voss - PW
7. Children's Bach - Helen Garner
8. Reports from a Wild Country - Deborah Bird Rose
9. Jack and Jill - Helen Hodgman
10. Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines - David Unaipon
11. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - M Barnard Eldershaw
12. Carpentaria - Alexis Wright
13. The Little Company - Eleanor Dark
14. For the Term of His Natural Life - Marcus Clarke
15. Tourmaline - Randolph Stow
16. My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
17. Peel Me a Lotus - Charmaine Clift
18. The Acolyte - Thea Astley
19. Cicada Gambit - Martin Johnston
20. Fat Man in History - Peter Carey
21. Seven Poor Men of Sydney - Christina Stead
22. The Magic Pudding - Norman Lindsay
23. Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
24. Tirra Lirra by the River - Jessica Anderson
25. Exiles at Home - Drusilla Modjeska
26. Harp in the South - Ruth Park
27. Letty Fox: Her Luck - Christina Stead
28. Mr Scobie's Riddle - Elizabeth Jolley
29. Eucalyptus - Murray Bail
30. The Pea Pickers - Eve Langley
31. From Little Things, Big Things Grow - Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly
32. Merry Go Round in the Sea - Randolph Stow
33. The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer
34. Come in Spinner - Dymphna Cusack and Florance James
35. The Blue Plateau - Mark Tredinnick
36. Lillian's Story - Kate Grenville
37. Me, Antman and Fleabag - Gayle Kennedy
38. Johnno - David Malouf
39. Because a White Man'll Never Do It - Kevin Gilbert
40. The Commandant - Jessica Anderson
41. Just Relations - Rodney Hall
42. A Difficult Young Man - Martin Boyd
43. The Albatross Muff - Barbara Hanrahan
44. Power Without Glory - Frank Hardy
45. Pioneers on Parade - Dymphna Cusack & Miles Franklin
46. City of Women - David Ireland
47. Mother, I'm Rooted - Kate Jennings
48. Five Bells - Kenneth Slessor
49. My Brother Jack - George Johnston
50. The Year of Living Dangerously - Christopher Koch
51. Careful, He Might Hear You - Sumner Locke Elliot
52. Fringe of Leaves - PW
53. Death of A River Guide - Richard Flanagan
54. The Spare Room - Helen Garner
55. The Glade within the Grove - David Foster
56. Mr Darwin's Shooter - Roger McDonald
57. Bush Studies - Barbara Baynton
58. The Electric Beach - James McQueen
59. Beware of the Dog - Peter Corris
60. I Can Jump Puddles - Alan Marshall
61. A Million Wild Acres - Eric Rolls
62. The Plains - Gerald Murnane
63. Diary of a Wombat - Jackie French
64. Nice Try - Shane Maloney
65. Two Weeks with the Queen - Morris Gleitzman
66. Paper Nautilus - Nicholas Jose
67. The Lost Dog - Michelle de Kretser (heh)
    
68. A Mother's Disgrace - Robert Dessaix
69. The Seal Woman - Beverley Farmer
70. Collected Poems - Gwen Harwood
71. Maestro - Peter Goldsworthy
72. A Long time Dying - Olga Masters
73. Benang - Kim Scott
74. The Lyre in the Pawnshop - Fay Zwicky
75. I for Isobel - Amy Witting
76. The Persimmon Tree and other stories - Marjorie Barnard
77. Moscow Trefoil - David Campbell and Rosemary Dobson
78. Caught in the Draft - Veronica Brady
79. Weevils in the Flour - Wendy Lowenstein
80. Vertigo - Amanda Lohrey
81. Sugar Heaven - Jean Devanney
82. Sorry - Gail Jones
83. The Twyborn Affair - PW
84. The Cry for the Dead - Judith Wright
85. Schindler's Ark- Thomas Keneally
86. Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living - Carrie Tiffany
87. What a Piece of Work - Dorothy Porter
88. Bobbin Up - Dorothy Hewett
89. The Drowner - Robert Drewe
90. Blue Skies - Helen Hodgman
91. Ride on Stranger - Kylie Tennant
92. Radiance - Louis Nowra
93. Aunts Up the Cross - Robyn Dalton
94. The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
95. My Place - Nadia Wheatley
96. White Man Got No Dreaming - WEH Stanner
97. The Drover's Wife - Henry Lawson
98. Tasmania by Road and Track - E T Emmett
99. The Aunt's Story - PW
100. Come Back Peter - Joan Woodberry

Hmm, not too bad... quite a few gaps I'd like to fill! I would just like to say in my defence that there are a lot of writers in this list that I have read other books by.

There's a few I'd change or add. Like

The Sound of One Hand Clapping by Richard Flanagan (although he's there, with a book I haven't read)
Gilgamesh by Joan London
and (this may be howled down) Monkey Grip by Helen Garner?

Although we could debate all day whether this is supposed to be a list of things every Australia SHOULD read, or a top 100 of what Australians HAVE read (which is what I think the BBC list is). Which would make quite a different list, methinks, stuffed with Bryce and Tim and Colleen.

How did you go?

A lot more than 100 books

*


It's been AGES since I've done a meme; I know I've done this one before, but I think the list has been updated. While I'm sitting here trying to decide if I feel well enough to hang around outside in the rainy damp in order to present my residency tonight or if I should sit in the relatively germy closeness of a cinema with my boys, or whether I should just go back to bed (I'm REALLY bored with that option), I might as well reminisce about the nice books I've read and see which gaps I need to plug this close to Christmas.

I got this version from Godard's Letterboxes:

And so it comes around again….

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions:

Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.

Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2. Lord of the Rings – JR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch – George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens (but I have it on my iPhone, waiting for a chance)

24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34. Emma – Jane Austen

35. Persuasion – Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41. Animal Farm – George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (Oh, I'm so ashamed)

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50. Atonement – Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52. Dune – Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72. Dracula – Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses – James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal – Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession – AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day – Kazu Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Am tackling these on ebook right now)

90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94. Watership Down – Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo


Phew, that's a lot more than 6! There are 15 that I've never tackled, which gives me a score of 85. Mind you, with all the sets, there's a lot more than 100 books on that list. Lucky I had my Thomas Hardy binge this year! How did you go?

Nice gaps, though. Gives me something to look for at the library for our Christmas sojourn to the Blue Mountains... we're renting a house around the corner from the in-laws, so that we can do the Big Family Christmas but still have some space. Board games and books ho! Last time we had Xmas at the BMs, it snowed! Mmm, that would be nice, although my Dr Sista Outlaw (happy birthday for yesterday!) might not agree.


* This image is a sculpture idea I have. It's called 'Book Club'. One day I'll make it.

Pulpy

I'm not ignoring you. I'm really sick, and can only spend about ten minutes in from of a screen before my eyes explode. I have a viral infection, and have been bedbound since sunday night apart from a brief attempt on Tuesday to do something quiet in my studio, an experience which resulted in a huge temperature spike and a hot/cold experience last night that I hope doesn't repeat itself today.

While I'm aching and sweating and bored out of my brain (there's only so much radio you can listen to), go over and have fun with the wonderful Pulp Fiction exhibition at the University of Otago Library, curated by my marvelous Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian and finally digitised.

Then come back here & amuse me by telling me which is your favorite cover or title and why.

Booking myself

Wow, two posts in a day.



I actually haven't been reading much lately, apart from dipping into some ebook texts when I'm stuck out somewhere. Mostly I've been lying in bed doing 'Codecracker' puzzles -- BB and I have a book each from NZ. I finished the Barbara Hanrahan biography and just haven't felt like following through with anything, not even her books.

But today I read aloud to the Aged Poet the splendid article on Jessica Anderson by Susan Sheridan in September's ABR and felt the juices stir. Tonight I'll dig out my HSC copy of Tirra Lirra, and then I'll keep my eyes peeled for a copy of The Commandant, which sounds good.

As you were.

Except if you're Sophie Cunningham. Does the latest news about Meanjin mean that you're going to concentrate on your writing? Because I've been hanging out for that Leonard & Virginia novel for a few years now...

PS: OMG I just nearly wet myself:

Another week that was

So. This week I taught a winter school of typography and general inkiness, 9.30 to 4.30 every day, with a lovely group of keen women who worked their butts off and produced nice things. That, combined with a couple of social events and a very surprising overnight adrenalin rush when our national leader changed gender, has resulted in my general puddleness this weekend. I am lying in bed writing this, after eating a nice Eggs Florentine made by a happy-to-be-home BB.



My type school ladies, setting type whilst listening to Kevin blub.


On Friday, after meeting my pupils at my studio for a quick tour and then wishing them safe trips home (one of them VERY kindly gave Bumblebee a lift to meet his father for the weekend, saving me a wet and tiring drive), I managed to scrape together enough energy to stumble through Woollies and buy a large amount of comfort food and (luckily) cat food (otherwise I think they would have eaten me up in the night) then get home and collapse on the couch, only rising to open another packet of something.

Best Beloved has been in Fremantle all week. I think I've mentioned before that he's studying to be a Superdooper Public Servant; he's been stuck in classes inside a windowless seminar room inside a hotel all week, and missed most of the political excitement, which seems very weird. If I were teaching a course like his, I'd have stopped class for the morning and made them analyse the situation as a group. Or at least celebrate or something... anyhoo, this has meant that Bumblebee and I have been batching it, living without routine or plan.

Bumblebee, because of my course, has had to be a latch-key kid all week, and had asked me what reward I would give him for getting mostly As this term. (He did get one B, but that was for the class where he made fresh profiteroles, so we now believe him when he says his French teacher dislikes him.) After giving him a talk about how proud I was but that doesn't translate into monetary value, I hit upon a fun thing that would slake his thirst for reward and solve the afternoon problem: we went to the local video shop and rented a week's worth of really cheesy movies. He was so happy.

We also shared the cooking, and ate fantastically. He's learned to make stirfry and burgers and we made minestrone together and I whipped up a lovely red beetroot risotto to celebrate a ginger PM.

So Friday night I forgave myself for eating two-minute spicy Thai noodles with a bag of marshmallows and a bottle of cider.



Did I mention... [whips back to the blog to check] no! Gosh, it's been a busy week. Last Saturday I took Bumblebee to the Craft ACT Bingo Night. He's never played bingo before, and I'd been introduced to it by Nana Annie when I was about his age: sitting in a hall with masses of people much older than me, the smell of handcream and excitement in the air, the sound of lightly thumping bingo markers and the tension-filled tight sucking of air through false teeth as the cards fill... it gets in your blood, it does.

This was a bit different... much younger crowd, for one thing. I regretted not bringing my bingo stamper, which is like a flat-ended texta perfectly designed to mark a dot on the card in one motion so that you can play multiple cards swiftly. I didn't regret bringing the boy, because he;s a lucky type, wins lots of things, and while I may be a cheery soul, I am not a commercially lucky person. I don't win things. When I am away on trips, Best Beloved and Bumblebee have a history of winning things (they've won a breadmaker and an icecream maker!) so I thought I'd test the theory that it's due to the lad. And it is. Sitting next to him, I won some fab jewellery and he won a handbag! Mine was a line bingo and his was a door prize. yay!

Snaps to Nana Bingo, played by the wonderful Barb McConchey, for making the evening amusing and urging us all on to greatness.



Then on Wednesday night we had a small but lovely launch for Those Who Travel, the book I helped produce over summer with Patsy Payne and Sarah Rice. Helen Maxwell, who closed her gallery earlier this year, has developed a lovely working relationship with her ex-next door neighbours, a funky furniture store, and they allowed her to have the launch in the store, which was fantastic. Lots of lovely things to sit on, precarious moments with red wine, and a launch speech by artist and writer Kim Mahood, who said lots of beautiful things about the book. We have adjusted the price a tad, and sold 4 books on the night, one to the National Gallery (w00t!). Bumblebee came along, wearing his new (vintage) brown leather bomber jacket, looking very cool, and spent the night pretending not to stare at the gorgeous daughter of a friend of mine, and she spent the night pretending not to stare at him, even though they quite happily Facebook regularly... ahh, I wouldn't be a teenager again if you paid me.

What else? Well, as you can see somewhere on the right there, I managed a bout of Twittering on wed and thursday, because that's where the action was re. the political scene. I had Bernice Balconey staying with me on Wed night, so she was jumping around in excitement and explaining things to me between brow furrows and squeals. The next day my whole class wanted the radio on, so we set type and listened to everything, blow by blow. My goodness, interesting times. Even if Julia ends up to be more more Margaret Thatcher than Helen Clarke, at least we can say we've had a female PM for a while... at the same time as a female GG. W00T again!

Also -- it's Zoe's birthday today. If you haven't already, send her a twit/FB poke/blog comment to send her your salutations. She just got her dream job, working for Stephanie Alexander, so while she hasn't been blogging, she's at least been floating.

Enough for now. I only have a day or so to go at the Book Stud before I have 6 months away from it... and I'm going to spend the next month finishing little jobs, cleaning the studio furiously (my friend Nicci is going to sublet it) and preparing for New Zealand, which looms close!

Postscript: here's a laugh. Here's something serious to think about. Or you can read the original.

Post-postscript: oh! Oh! oh! Big snaps to Penthe, you can now laugh even harder, LOLcatting at the change of leadership...

Chance and Choice

Being part of the over-educated, over-thinking the small things, under-thinking the big things, will-vote-for-Rudd-to-keep-Julia-in-power, no-junk-mail, anti-capitalism-but-buy-my-wares demographic, I find buying new things very frustrating.

Walking into a store full of multiples of bright shiny units, I don't feel excitement, and I don't get the 'poor thing, let me take you home and love you urge' as other seem to, especially when they are faced with large shiny appliances. I don't like trophies.

Mind you, I don't think I'm a hunter, either, like many of you who regularly go on expeditions to all the local op shops, sifting carefully through the racks in search of whatever your holy grail is.

I'm definitely a gatherer, but in a very soft and random way, no order or system or structure.

I prefer meandering past somewhere, popping in if I've got the headspace, looking vaguely over the shelves and rack and having something snag the edge of my vision. Sometimes it's just a lonely object calling for someone, anyone, to buy them a drink and remember the old days. If it's not something I can think of a use for, I'll reposition it on the display in a way that calls more attention to it, and wish it luck.

Other times, I'll be trying to remember what I came in for (do I need trousers that fit me? How's my stash of crap printing tops?) and I will find something that will totally transform my whole wardrobe with a single wave of its magic wand. Or a book that I've been wanting to read for ages, and now is just the right time to buy it. Or not, but it will take its place in the bedside queue, and maybe even jump the queue if it's really alluring. It's all about serendipity.

Or when I'm going shopping for something specific, I prefer the op shops, because they have dedicated racks to jumpers, jeans, dresses, all arranged in sizes, so that I can head to one particular spot and see if the thing I want is there. If not, I'll go without. If I really really need it, I'll reluctantly go to a retail shop and find it. I tend to go to the same (big, cheap) retail shops because little boutiques either don't stock my size or they do my head in with all their tricksy ways of laying out their wares.

Which is a long, roundabout introduction to the fact that last week my lovely auntie Lou gave me a Border's frequent buyer card with five of the boxes stamped, one more to go, and then you get a free book. She doesn't have a Borders where she lives, and she knew that I'd love the chance to buy some new books. Present! yay! We love gift cards and vouchers in my family. But the action of choosing is sometimes crippling.

When I got to Borders (I didn't waste any time, Lou!), I wandered around, thinking, two books. I have to pick two books. The problem is, I could have taken home at least fifty in my first glance. For some reason, in a secondhand book shop, the books whisper at you:

Psst, have you read me?

Hey, you, yeah, you: I bet your copy of me is all bath-bloated and dog-earred. Wouldn't I look good on your shelf instead?

Mmmm... did you know that I'm signed by the author?

The minute you walked in the door, I could see you were a...

But in a new-book store, they are shouting at you:

BEST SELLER!

PRIZE WINNER!

GLOWING REVIEWS!

LUCID! RIVETTING! UNPUTDOWNABLE!

And the colours are all fresh and bright and there's repetition everywhere, even though the covers are different. The neatness conflicts with the chaos, and the room smells like cleaning fluid, not paper; old books have an aroma that lures me in. A while ago one of my Mackay workshop participants sent me a cartoon from the Australian? the Age?: A booth for iPads with a long line of people waiting to look and touch one, and next to it a small table with a sign saying 'Book Sniffing & Fondling', with one person standing at it, their face in a book, joyously sniffing.

So, there I was, wandering around Borders, two books for the taking, with about twenty minutes to choose before my movie started (The White Ribbon, which was amazing). Thank goodness for the movie, because without a time limit, I would have been lost. I should have walked in with a plan, a shortlist, clipped reviews, or something. Instead, I had vague memories of recommendations, and a profound regret that I hadn't clipped out the list of post-apocalyptic novels listed by Colin Steele in the Canberra Times a few weeks ago, since I always forget sci-fi titles when I'm faced with the crap covers and endless sequels in the Sci-fi & Fantasy section. Why isn't there a Speculative Fiction section? Who decided Science Fiction and Fantasy belong together? They are nothing like each other, apart from the fact that no-one seems get published unless their manuscript can be divided into at least 12 volumes.

Time was ticking. Best Beloved was in JB HiFi, his favorite browsing shop, and the only place we bother to get gift cards for him, and he was due to come back and grasp my elbow to propel me towards Dendy at any moment. I'm a Libran, I can't make choices under pressure. I couldn't come back, I don't get moments like these in shops very often.

I would like to say that I chose offbeat, quirky titles that demonstrate my superior alternate demographic (see line one), but I didn't. I ended up standing in front of the New Release and Bestseller racks (next to each other at the front of the store) and chose Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and So Much for That by Lionel Schriver. Books that everyone has been telling me to read, and that I would normally wait to snap up at the Lifeline Book Fair because they will be there in force after everyone else has read them for their book clubs and disposed of them.

Still, two new books! Not to be sneezed at... because they won't be ready to sniff until they've experienced a bit of life.







(Thanks, Auntie Lou... you're a champion.)

Things I keep forgetting to post

I'm in a weirdly busy zone, not helped by the fact that I'm feeling fuzzy and early-coldish. So I keep forgetting to mention stuff that I really should mention.

Like: you may or may not have read about the Shopping Sherpa's amazing cargo cult arrival of an amazing amount of art supplies and books on the theme of art and design. I also was a beneficiary of that largesse, as there was a box amongst it with my name on it, as the secret donor is someone that I've connected with at some point (the mystery of all this is delightful). The box was full of yummies like a few Keith Smith manuals, and lots of handy book and journal instruction volumes. There were a few doubles with the books I've already got, so I gave them back to the SS to distribute (or keep in her new amazing library), but suddenly I have a really good shelf in my studio on books on books! So THANK YOU, secret person! I hope you are getting a warm and fuzzy feeling about being so generous.

Like: Shopping Sherpa also decided that I was the right person to share a free ticket to MicMacs at Dendy. In return I bought her some sushi and taught her how to play the Alphabet Waiting Game, which she played very enthusiastically, to my amusement. In the Alphabet Waiting Game, you try to piece together the alphabet from the text in the ads before the movie starts. It's harder than it sounds, especially if there are no ads by jewellers halfway through. In our version, signs and labels in the background of the ads are fair game, but others may disagree.

MicMacs is fantastic, but NOT FOR KIDS, even if it looks fun and quirky on the ads. It should be ok for young teens, but be aware that the first ten minutes are quite confronting, involving graphic death and shooting scenes. There's also some sexy stuff, but the violence is more shocking... and it's meant to be. This is a movie about arms traders, and it is deeply satisfying in the way it moves through periods of utter farce into a message that is real and deep.

Like: Edible Books Day is upcoming! 1 April is the actual day, but my book class at the art school are going to try to have a tea party next monday during class. I have to think of something fun but quick to do, because I'm driving to Sydney for the day on Sunday to attend the 70th birthday of my mother-in-law...

Like: I got Tim T's new zine! it's about a pornographic octopus, and it's hilarious. I'm not sure how or where he's distributing them -- probably Sticky? -- but if you want one, and you should, contact him at timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au.

That should do, for now.